Growing Boy

A story about growing up...a little too much, maybe...

*first published in ScifanSat Ezine, winner of the Bartleby Boar Award

Mom told me not to eat that candy I got from Ms. Bezinger. She said it would ruin my appetite.

I reckon she’s only saying that on account of she thinks I ruin most everything. Other day,she said I ruined her carpet when I come in after playing in the creek with Billy Patterson. That time, she about burst a vessel, seeing me dripping water all over Creation. Day before that, she was on about how I ruined her petunias when I was playing tackle football with the boys in the backyard. I told it was Josh Foricker who tackled me into the dang things, it wasn’ my idea at all, but she wouldn’t listen to me. Not that she ever does, anyway.

And every time she gets two or three glasses into a bottle of wine, she starts on about how I ruined her marriage. Far as I can tell, all I did was be born, and dad decided he’d had enough. I don’t reckon I remember much about him, just kinda how he looked, kinda burly with a dark beard and short hair. He always seemed to have a racing cap on, and he always looked like he was smiling. I liked dad, but I don’t know if he felt the same way. Last year, I only saw him on Holidays, and my Birthday seemed to slip his mind.

But mom’s one to talk about appetites. Every time she wants to shove some glop she’s slapped together for dinner, I hear this whole riot act about how I “need to eat” cause “I’m a growing boy”. Listen to this woman! She couldn’t keep a story straight if her life depended on it! Well, I guess now I’ll be a growing boy with some candy in my mouth, huh?

Thing is, Ms. Bezinger’s house is always popular on Halloween. If you can brave that yard of hers, with all those creepy flowers (they seem to sway towards you, like the tentacles of a jellyfish), and if you got the guts to ring her doorbell, you’ll get the best sugar eats there are. Popcorn balls, candied apples, you name it. She’s got an herb garden out back, so she says, and she seasons everything to perfection. When I was a kid, mom used to march me up to her front door every Halloween and make me take a treat and say thank you Ms. Bezinger and all that jazz. But I tell you what, any fear I had of being poisoned by that hag dissolved when whatever it was crossed my tongue.

Cooking and flowers, that was Ms. Bezinger’s specialty. Everywhere there was a flower show, a bake off, or any gathering of el birdos with veiny hands competing in home ec drudgery, you’d find Ms. Bezinger with those weird plants and delicious treats of hers. She never went to church, as far as I could see, but she was always at the luncheons and prayer breakfasts of the First Baptist and the Mother Mary’s Catholic popping out deserts with every other bible-thumping crone. Talk about persistence! She’d make your eyes bleed with those flower arrangements and your tongue tingle with those sugary snacks.

Trouble was, cooking and flowers was mom’s thing, too. I weren’t never much of a fan of mom’s cooking, but I reckon she saved the good stuff for the county fair judges. She was cordial as you like to Ms. Bezinger on the street, but I think deep down, she was tired of coming in second and third while Ms. Bezinger brought home blue ribbons time and time again.

I guess Ms. Bezinger had to be good at something, seeing as how God hit her with about fifteen ugly sticks. She’is the weirdest-looking lady you ever saw with the most beautiful garden in the whole state, and that’s the truth. You take the shortest, gnarliest, wrinkliest old woman you ever come across, and I guarantee you ol’ Ms. Bezinger can beat her for weirdness, no contest. She’s shorter than me even, with a back bent like a corkscrew. Maybe it’s just her glasses, but she has an enormous pair of eyes that don’t never seem to wink. And her hands? Man, she’s got huge mits with fingers that got to be almost a foot long! She always holds’em folded close to her chest, like a T-Rex from a movie. When she smiles, you should see her teeth: they ain’t no dentures, but long teeth, like a gopher, long and sharp-looking. Just looking at her shuffle along with those humongous hands and big ol’ eyes is enough to give anybody the creeps.

I tell ya, it’s a heck of a thing to live next door to the local witch lady. Or whatever she is. Most of the boys got a complex about coming over, on account of us living next door to ol’ Ms. Bezinger. Thing is, what if a ball goes over the fence into her yard? Then what? I sure as heck wouldn’t go get it. Ms. Bezinger? That’s suicide.

Josh Foricker has a regular business, talking to kids about Ms. Bezinger and sharing local legends with anybody who will listen. See, it was Josh who convinced me that one time to sneak up to her house and peek in the window. I was against it but he coerced me, that way he does, where he just gets under your skin and crawls around until you give in.

Of course, Josh has his work cut out for him on that one. People have been talking for a long time about how Ms. Bezinger isn’t human. Josh’s theory was always that she was an alien, and come down to colonize Earth with her weirdo flowers. He said that even though our town ain’t but three thousand souls, there weren’t nobody he ever heard of that ever called Ms. Bezinger by her first name. Fact was, nobody seemed to know anything about her, where she was from or who her family was or any such thing. Josh’s older sister, who just went to college, said that Ms. Bezinger was old even when she was our age, and Josh said even his dad let slip that Ms. Bezinger had to be nearly a hundred because even he remembered her being old and wrinkly when he was a kid. Josh is known for making up tall tales, but I reckon he might be onto something. I’ve lived next to Ms. Bezinger for as long as I can remember, and I ain’t ever seen anybody come to visit her, no family or anything. Heck, she barely even comes out, except to go to the store.

And it's a small town, people talk. The kids at school sure as hell never get tired of chewing over Ms. Bezinger. Every year, some kid comes up to me and Josh and asks me about what it’s like living next door to a witch. Or an alien. Or a serial killer. Whatever the story is that year. And Josh lives for that, because then he gets to ramble on about how Ms. Bezinger came here in a UFO in the 50s, and how she catches kids and grinds them up and uses them for fertilizer for her alien plant people. Pretty soon, those flowers will bloom into pod people, who will take over the human race, just like in a scifi picture. So on and so on.

But Josh, he’s always got his head on making money. And what he did, he started charging the boys to have a peek into her house. One of the guys would come for a three-way sleepover, and Josh, he’d pop the big question: you wanna take a peek in the old lady’s place? And at first, they’d be all coy about it. Then Josh would start in with those stories, and he’d be prodding them for a quarter of an hour, and finally they’d buckle. For five bucks (which is a heap of money when you're ten) he would sneak them across the fence and right up to her back window and let them take a glance inside. Like she was a zoo exhibit. Next day, we’d split the money, and I think in one summer we made thirty bucks a piece that way.

I didn’t like it at first, but you can’t argue with good money. And I gotta tell you, I got to getting pretty curious about what was going on in that saltbox next door. See, her house is pretty funny, and like her, extremely old, with furniture that looks like something from the dark ages. These old couches that are like something from a period piece, and oil lamps, and stuff that doesn’t make any sense. I don’t mean odd-looking nicknacks, but furniture that I can’t see no purpose for. Like it wasn’t made for human beings. All the rooms on the bottom floor are like that, and all of them full of weird things that I really can’t put no name to. But the kitchen is the worst.

First of all, it’s full of tools that aren’t like anything I ever seen. They’re like something between doodads from an alien abduction piece and surgical implements from Frankenstein’s castle. All nasty looking, and I don’t mind telling you, I’ve often had dreams of her wrenching me apart with them. But second to that is, the kitchen is where she spends most of her time. Just about every peeping Tom session we did ended up watching her in the kitchen, futzing about, working on something or other. I wish I’d written everything we saw down, because looking back, so much of what we witnessed didn’t seem to make much sense in the context that we saw it.

For once thing, she sang while she worked. And I’ll tell you, it wasn’t like any language I’ve ever heard. Heck, I’ve never heard a human throat make noises like that! She would sing to herself while she cut up flowers, but those flowers…

See, that was the second thing. The flowers had things inside them, growing. I thought they were bees at first, but even though they looked like insects, they were

Different

Wrong

I can’t explain it. They were critters, with chitin and tons of legs and wings, but I can’t really find the words for it. Plus, we watched this from the window, so I never got more than a glance at them. But they weren’t like anything that looked like a flower. And she cut these things up and used them to…

Well, I don’t know. She had pots going, but she always seemed to be making something that I didn’t recognize. Everything we saw was just so weird, the context never helped us understand it. And of course, remember, we were trying not to get caught, so we could only watch her for a minute or two before running back to my place. I tell you, all those kids me and Josh took over there got their money’s worth! Ms. Bezinger never disappointed.

But I tell you, I was getting creeped out. It was all ok for Josh, because he went home the next day. Me, though, I had to live next door to that weirdo. And I knew it was only a matter of time before she caught on to us.

Turns out, only a matter of time was yesterday. We pulled the routine like we always did, me and Josh and Billy and a new kid at school named Nick Kasbrak. Josh wheedled Nick something terrible, new kids to our circle are always a sucker for those Ms. Bezinger stories. When Josh was finished, Nick looked like he might piss himself at the thought of even going near the house next door. But he relented, as they all do, and with our flashlights we snuck over the fence and through Ms. Bezinger’s eerie garden of strange flowers.

Everything went off without a hitch. Until the next morning, when mom got a phone call.

Did we leave footprints? Or did she outright see us? Maybe she knew all along, and decided for whatever reason that this time was the last straw. Either way, mom gave me the nastiest talking to I’ve ever had yet. Apparently, she thinks Josh is a bad influence, and wants me to have a “proper male role model”. She started on that kick even when she was with dad, but she’s really ramped it up since dad flew the coop. She’s always lending me out for chores for little old ladies from church, just like I was a vacuum cleaner or a pair of hedge clippers. I guess it was only a matter time before I ended up working for Ms. Bezinger, but I was hoping it wouldn’t be so soon.

Of course, I’m more scared of mom than Ms. Bezinger. The old woman is just creepy, but mom is downright psychotic these days. When I found out I was spending one day of the summer, one of my precious days of freedom before the start of the school year mowing Ms. Bezinger’s substantial lawn, I said no way, no how. But she gave me that look, the one every mom has in her arsenal, and stuck her finger in my face, and told me I better hup-two and do a good job. This was compensation, for upsetting our poor neighbor, and I best not ruin it, like I did everything else.

So I mowed the lawn for her. She stood on the porch watching me push the mower back and forth, her eyes rolling back and forth from behind her thick-as-a-brick glasses. The crazy thing was those flowers, which grew all around her lawn and back garden. Having seen what I had seen, I had this horrible fear that I would touch one by accident, or that I would inhale pollen from one. I had seen them in the dark when sneaking up to the house a million times, but by daylight they took on a new life. They swayed in their eerie way, orienting themselves towards me as I passed by. I couldn’t help but feel they were reaching out for me, as if begging for help.

But I finished, God help me. I stumbled up the porch, sweating my head off, where Mz. Bezinger was waiting, holding a bowl in her humongous hands. And she had this smile, so that I could see her creepy gopher teeth. She told me what a good boy I was in her cutesy granny voice and dug around in that bowl with her long, crooked fingers. She had what looked like giant malted milk balls, huge round gobs of chocolate, one of which she selected for me.

“I made this myself” she said. “Something sweet, for a sweet young man.” Then she pushed it at me with a big grin. Well, I didn’t want to take it at first. But it just looked so delicious. Round, smooth, sweet-looking, perfect. I took it, and her smile broadened until it looked as if it would split her head in two.

“That one is for you. The rest are for your friends, when the time comes.”

Then she turned and shuffled back into the house.

When I got home I was holding it, thinking about whether to chow down on it or not. Of course, mom started in with her whole speel: ruin your appetite and all. She’s making pasta in a creamed spinach sauce tonight.

I hate spinach.

When I put that thing in my mouth, I was riding high. The taste was incredible, indescribable. There was the smooth taste of chocolate, with something underneath, something tart and chewy. It was like candy, but no candy I’d ever tasted before, something next level. I’d heard people whistle Dixie about Ms. Bezinger’s cooking, but this was something else!

And now

Turns out, I really am a growing boy. My clothes ripped and my bed broke. The whole room looks smaller and I feel

I feel a lot hairier now. And my hands are getting bigger, and my fingernails have grown a heck of a lot.

And mom was wrong. That candy didn’t ruin my appetite the first bit. In fact, I feel hungrier than I can ever remember feeling in my whole life. For some reason, I got this craving for raw meat.

Man, I really want the taste of blood in my mouth right now.

I’ll go downstairs and see mom. Maybe she can help me out. She’s not much of cook, but I’m sure she’s delicious.